


Atlas

by MildlyMoonstruck



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angsty Introspection, Gen, One Shot, Post-Female Titan Arc, Tentative Canon Interpretations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-11
Updated: 2014-02-11
Packaged: 2018-01-11 23:42:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1179341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MildlyMoonstruck/pseuds/MildlyMoonstruck
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You can trust yourself and your own abilities, or you can place your trust in the Survey Corps.”</p><p>He is a hypocrite.</p><p>“And me.”</p><p>This is nothing new.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Atlas

**Author's Note:**

> Based off a lovely prompt by tumblr user gayprotagonist/ao3 user minorthirds (go read her fic Sang D'Encre, it's absolutely stunning).

When Levi says it’s not his fault, he means it.

He watches Eren, first out of the corner of his eye, and then unabashedly when he realizes that the boy isn’t going to look at him. He’s far away, eyes devoid of anything in a look that doesn’t fit on his face and a shade nauseatingly reminiscent of the forest floor, dark even during the day because the trees block out the light.

(But the lack of light didn’t hide the blood.)

Levi knows an unfamiliar, unidentifiable urge that he acts on regardless; he speaks to get Eren’s attention, delivers a dry joke that tugs a hollow laugh out of the kid but doesn’t make him look his way.

Eren stares at the wall and mumbles that he’s talkative today.

Levi frowns and brushes it off with an insult that holds no real heat; he chooses not to comment that Eren, for once, isn’t. The black tea in his cup doesn’t scald his tongue anymore as he lifts it to his lips for a swig, and that’s only another indicator that too much time has passed in this room, now bigger than it’s ever been because they are the only two left.

Eren apologizes again.

Levi refuses to let him.

He’s no fool; he can tell that Eren, for all the admiration that he holds and isn’t the slightest bit subtle about, does not believe Levi when he says that it’s not his fault. Levi won’t try to convince him. If his word isn’t enough, there’s nothing he can do to change that.

(He doesn’t know how to go about it anyway.)

In the silence, Levi has nothing to do but wonder, not for the first time, if he is the one at fault. If he hadn’t gone off to resupply. If he hadn’t taken his sweet-ass time with it out of a low-burning spite for Erwin pulling rank on him. If he hadn’t left in the first place.  If he hadn’t pushed Eren.

Because he had pushed Eren. And maybe the boy doesn’t know it, but Levi knows it, and he’d always known it. He’d known it from the very second he’d uttered those words back in that forest, those words that guaranteed Eren would do exactly what he expected.

_“You can trust yourself and your own abilities, or you can place your trust in the Survey Corps.”_

He is a hypocrite.

_“And me.”_

This is nothing new.

He’d never meant to be anyone to look up to, and even though his greatest admirer is a fucked up teenager who knew what it was like to slide a knife through someone’s throat well before he likely had any fucking clue what puberty was, for God’s sake, even so—

Even so.

It hadn’t been hard at all to tell the exact moment that Eren had latched onto his words like a beacon in the dark and let them guide him, let them influence his choice back then, a decision that he wasn’t meant to have regretted.

(Or maybe he was. But Levi hadn’t wanted that to be the case.)

Levi hadn’t wanted that to be the case.

For all the stupid shit that comes out of Eren’s mouth, for all that he doesn’t understand about this world, for all that he doesn’t understand about himself, it startles Levi that Eren holds more of an understanding about him than he’ll ever admit out loud. And it goes both ways, but he thinks that maybe Eren already knows that.

Levi can’t think of any other reason that Eren would look at him the way he does.

The way he looks at the world when he talks about the possibility of what exists beyond their walls.

What he’d ever done to merit that, he doesn’t know, and he won’t ever ask.

Not in this lifetime, anyway.

But he’d known from the moment he’d said that, that Eren would listen. He had known.

Eren is a good kid. Eren wants to please. Eren wants to do what’s right, and if Levi hadn’t ever uttered  _those_ words in  _that_ tone—

Eren would have believed in himself the exact same way Levi had done, all those years ago. Taken matters into his own hands. Had faith in his own abilities. Trusted himself, trusted what he thought was right. Made the right choice. Before another expedition from another time, with another loss.

Another cry.

(He wonders if, years from now, he will still hear the thunderous, devastating roar of Eren’s titan form echoing in his head as clearly as he sometimes still hears another scream.)

(Levi knows it’s not the case, but to him, they were both cries for help. In a way.)

In the end, he’d been able to save Eren. At least.

He watches Eren again. Dull eyes, blank face. His gaze slips down lower; the glint of the key round his neck catches his eye in the lamplight. He watches it rise and fall with every breath Eren takes.

_No._

For a moment, Eren glances his way. Finally.

_Not ‘at least’._

In the end, he’d been able to save Eren.

(Sometimes it seems like all he does is regret his choices.)

Eren looks away. Levi can almost feel the boy’s guilt weighing him down. Another burden, and even though he’d been able to hold up that boulder in Trost like he was shouldering the world, Levi knows that Eren is just a boy, and there are some things, some burdens, that he can’t bear.

(Even if he is a monster, he is not without a heart.)

And again, Levi wonders if it’s his fault. Wonders if he’d added that weight, and if he could’ve prevented that. Wonders what it would take to ease it, even though there is nothing in his mind that he’ll ever say aloud.

A part of him regrets that, too.

(But.)

He takes another sip of tea.

(In the end, he’d been able to save Eren.)

It’s gone cold.

(He’d been able to save Eren.)

He sets the cup down and decides that’s enough.


End file.
